They play tapes on the VCR at two, burn their own CDs at 10 and create Web sites at 14. So what should consumer-electronics companies do to keep the most technologically jaded generation ever buying new products?

The potential market alone is enough to make manufacturers giddy: Seventy million people were born between 1976 and 1997, a group nearly as large as the Baby Boomers and three times the size of Generation X. "It's hard...